Tuesday, January 05, 2016

800 Words on Ethics and Abortion

Nathan Nobis is an Associate Professor of Philosophy
at Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA USA, and author of many articles on topics in
bioethics, including abortion.

Abortion
involves killing a fetus to end a pregnancy. These fetuses are human, biologically, and are beings. So, abortion involves the
killing of a human being, which is usually wrong. So is abortion wrong?

Fetuses are more than just biologically alive like
cells or organs: they are lives, each
is a human life. Some argue that this
is because they are organisms: hearts
are parts of beings, but the being is the whole organism.

Some thinkers argue that our being human organisms
physically continuous with fetuses who were human organisms makes abortion
wrong. They seem to argue that since we are wrong to kill now we were wrong to kill at any
stage of our development, since we’ve been the same being over time.

This argument is influential in certain circles but dubious.
You are likely over three feet tall now, but weren’t always. You can reason
morally, but couldn’t always. You have the right to make autonomous decisions
about your own life, but didn’t always. Just because we have some property or
right now doesn’t entail that we’ve always had it, even as fetuses. This
argument’s advocates need to explain why, say, the right to life is an
exception to this rule.

We, readers of this essay, are human beings or human
life, and we are prima facie wrong to
kill (wrong to kill without a very good reason). Are we wrong to kill because we are human beings or human
life?

No. We are wrong to kill, arguably, because killing us
prevents us from experiencing the goods of our future: accomplishments,
relationships, enjoying our lives and so on.

Many philosophers describe these capacities in terms
of us being persons. A theory at from
least Locke can be expressed roughly that persons
are beings with personalities: persons are conscious beings with thoughts,
feelings, memories and anticipations and other psychological states. If we die
or become permanently comatose, we cease to be persons, since we permanently
lose consciousness.

This theory of personhood has explanatory power: it
helps us understand why we are persons, and how we (or our bodies) can cease to
be persons. It justifies a growing belief that some non-human animals are
persons. It explains why rational space aliens, if there are any, would be
persons. It explains why divine or spiritual beings are or would be persons.

On this theory of personhood, early fetuses are not
persons because their brains and nervous systems aren’t developed enough and
connected enough for consciousness and what’s psychologically necessary for
personhood. Medical and scientific research reports that this doesn’t happen
until after the first trimester or, more likely, mid-pregnancy. Nearly all
abortions occur very early in pregnancy, killing fetuses that are not conscious
yet, and so are not persons, and cannot feel pain. Any later abortions,
affecting conscious and feeling fetuses who are persons or close to it, should
be strongly condemned and allowed for only the most serious reasons, I argue.

But just because something (or someone) is not a person, that doesn’t obviously
mean that they are not wrong to kill.

If fetuses aren’t persons, they are potential persons.
Does that potential give them the right to life or otherwise make them wrong to
kill? If it did, then potentialadults,
spouses, criminals, doctors, and judges would have the rights of actual ones.
They don’t, so potential personhood doesn’t yield the rights of actual persons.

Doesn’t abortion prevent a fetus from experiencing its
valuable future, just like killing us
does, even if it is not a person? Since fetuses are not aware of those futures,
their futures are not just like ours.
And a sperm-and-the-egg-it-would-fertilize-it
arguably has a valuable future also, and contraception (even by
abstinence!) keeps it from its future. But that’s not wrong, so it is not wrong
to prevent something from experiencing its future if it hasn’t ever been aware of that future yet. That principle
seems to apply to fetuses also.

Finally, suppose these arguments are all wrong and all
fetuses are persons with the right to life. Does that make abortion wrong? Not
necessarily, Judith Thompson famously argued in her 1971 “A Defense of
Abortion”: if I must use your kidney to stay alive, do I have a right to your kidney? No, and you don’t
violate my rights if you don’t let me use it and I die. That shows that the
right to life is nota right to others’ bodies, even if others’
bodies are necessary for our lives to continue. Fetuses then might not have
a right to the pregnant woman’s body and so she doesn’t violate their rights by
not allowing a fetus to use it.

These are just a few philosophical arguments about the
controversial ethical topic, briefly sketched. Each is worthy of further
discussion and reasoned debate.

No comments:

Nathan Nobis

1000-Word Philosophy

1000-Word Philosophy

Animals & Ethics 101

Real Life: This is not a Game: Personal Finance for Young Adults (paperback)

Real Life: This is not a Game: Personal Finance for Young Adults (Kindle)

Search This Blog

About

"The ultimate measure of a person is not where he or she stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he or she stands at times of challenge and controversy." - Martin Luther King, Jr. (Morehouse, '48)